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McAfee bug forces Aussie store closures

Australian supermarket chain Coles says the security company's flawed update affected 1,100 of its point-of-sales terminals.

Ben Grubb ZDNet Australia

Australian supermarket behemoth Coles was hit Thursday by a McAfee bug that affected 10 percent of its point-of-sales terminals and forced it to shut down stores in both western and southern parts of the country.

An update from security company McAfee released Wednesday caused computers using Microsoft's Windows XP Service Pack 3 to incorrectly identify a legitimate operating system component as containing a virus. Affected computers experienced networking problems or repeated rebooting. McAfee has since removed the buggy update code from the company's servers.

Coles spokesman Jim Cooper told ZDNet Australia that 1,100 of the supermarket's terminals had been affected by the bug.

"What's happened is we're basically pretty prompt in updating our McAfee virus software as required and unfortunately that's where we got caught by it," Cooper said.

Read more of "Coles closes stores due to McAfee bug" at ZDNet Australia.